Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828, at Nantes, an industrial town on the Loire River in western France. His father, Pierre Verne, was a magistrate and his mother, Sophie Allotte de la Fuye Verne, was a descendant of an established, well-to-do French family.

Verne completed his legal training but never took over his father's law practice as intended. Instead, he pursued an interest in literature and drama. He began to write plays for production in the Parisian theatre, most of which were unsuccessful. In 1850, one of his plays (The Broken Straws) was successfully produced by the famous author Alexandre Dumas at the Theatre Historique. Verne served as secretary of the Theatre Lyrique in Paris from 1852 to 1854.

While still involved in the Parisian theater, Verne read Charles Baudelaire's translations of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and began to write similar tales.

Verne thought that Poe's...